i really want to go into academia. i have specific academic interests that i fleshed out during my final year of cs undergrad and now im trying to figure out how to get into academia. i realised during my internship last year that i really don’t like the tech space as much apart from data analysis and just fun web dev. i want to get into post colonial/decolonial studies mainly focused on africa as well as data-driven policy research (i love writing research papers, data visualisations, quant research and policy memos). if i think about the job id want it would be working at a research center at university, using data to make policy memos or inform international law but also doing field research and literature reviews to understand how cultural and legal history has affected the current development in africa and how we can improve certain things.more specifically in interested in how colonialism affected borders and ethnicity in african countries (focused on nigeria rn) and how that affected governance and how that has led to current economic and political trends. im also really interested in global indigeneity and fights for self determination, especially in an african context.
i’m a huge history fan and in the past year, ive written two academic papers around my academic interests.
what i’m concerned about is how to successfully pivot. my gpa is not the best but i’ve got great cs experience (big tech internship, part time job, TA) because i was tunnel visioned but now i don’t know how to make this transition to the academic space i want to.
i hope this made and any help would be great!
also if this was confusing ask any clarifying questions!
Comments
I always tell people to talk to their professors. They “made it” so they’ll definitely have a much better sense than you or any of us of how things work in your field, and how to transition into something like a PhD.
That said, I cannot stress enough to you that there are no jobs. Don’t go into this thinking you’ll be the exception that somehow lands a TT job—you almost certainly won’t. You should only even consider doing a PhD if you’re ready to do it for its own sake even if it doesn’t lead to an academic job (which it almost certainly won’t).
Honestly if I were someone with a strong CS background I would definitely spend a few years making some money first, and then reevaluate if you want to try your luck in academia. It’s really rough, there’s no sugarcoating it.